Pylot - Tool For Load Testing of Web Applications

Pylot is easy to use, free tool for load testing Web applications. Despite the small size of distribution, it has rich functionality, which, moreover, can be expanded with his own, thanks to open source code.
 
Key features of Pylot:

  •     Support for HTTP and HTTPS (SSL)
  •     Generate a multi-threaded load
  •     Automatic handling cookies
  •     Check server response using regular expressions
  •     Displays real-time statistics
  •     Generates a detailed report about the test results (HTML + graphics)
  •     Work in the console and graphical modes
  •     Ability to work remotely using XML-RPC
  •     Cross platform compatibility (Pylot written in Python)

To start working with Pylot, you will need:

  •     Actually, the Pylot
  •     Python version 2.5 or higher
  •     Library wxPython (required only if you want to work with the utility in GUI mode)
  •     Libraries NumPy and Matplotlib (needed only if you want to see the graphs in reports about the test results)

After all that is necessary will be established it will be sufficient to execute the script run.py, located in the folder with the program. Running this script with no additional attributes will display a small help, which will describe all the possible options of utility. Also, if you installed wxPython, then after executing the command:

python run.py-g

will start the graphical interface. 

All test cases for Pylot must be recorded in the format of xml. By default they are stored in a file testcases.xml. Format of entries is follows:

  <case>
      <url> URL </ url>
      <method> HTTP METHOD </ method>
      <body> REQUEST BODY CONTENT </ body>
      <add_header> ADDITIONAL HTTP HEADER </ add_header>
      <verify> STRING OR REGULAR EXPRESSION </ verify>
      <verify_negative> STRING OR REGULAR EXPRESSION </ verify_negative>
      <timer_group> TIMER GROUP NAME </ timer_group>
   </ Case>

Only tag <url>  is mandatory, all the rest can be used as needed.

For Windows users, there is a nice bonus in the form of tools for writing test, which is located in the directory.. \ pylot \ util. To run it you need to install PyWin32 and type in the command line

python pylot_win_recorder.py

after which will be launched IE and all the actions that you will perform in his window will be displayed in the console in the form of HTTP requests in a format xml-test cases.

As the test results Pylot proposes to use the HTML file with summary metrics, and logs server response for each of the streams.

You canlLearn more about Pylot on the official website of the program pylot.org

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